Thursday, March 26, 2009

Believeland pt.1

Note: I am writing this on a Wednesday afternoon just mere hours before I attend the Cavaliers vs. Nets game at Quicken Loans Arena. My beloved Cavs have an opportunity to clinch the best single season record of any Cleveland Cavaliers team in franchise history.

I am writing this column today for two reasons:

1. I don't feel like writing tomorrow because I am spending all day re-working my Backdrop story.

2. If the Cavaliers survive this HUUUUUUGEEEEE jinx I am placing on them by taking it for granted that they will win tonight, then this season is truly special and they have a chance to bring a Championship home to Cleveland for the first time since 1964.

I am not from Cleveland.

I like to say I am and I like to think I am (it's called cognitive dissonance, I believe) but I have only lived here for 8 years. But I love it. I love everything about the city and all of its suburbs (except for Solon). And I think I have figured out why.

Losers are just attracted to losers.

I am a huge loser. I lack any sort of athletic talent, fashion sense or suaveness. My only two claims to fame are that I have a really hot girlfriend....and can name every baseball line-up in the MLB. And Cleveland is not so different from me. It is quite a loser as well, as so eloquently put by Charles Barkley recently. But also like me, Cleveland has two things going for it: a hot girlfriend (Halle Berry)....and the Cleveland Cavaliers.

I came soooo close to witnessing the Cleveland Indians clinch the AL Central back in 2007. There I was, sitting in Pronkville with my brother and the aforementioned hot girlfriend, waiting to witness an event that I have never witnessed before happen to a team that I love completely and unconditionally. All it took was an Indians win and a Tigers loss. The Tigers held up their end of the bargain.

Paul Byrd and the Indians didn't.

Now here I am again, about to WITNESS history. The stakes are certainly different as the Cavs have already won the Central Division and guaranteed themselves a playoff berth, but it will still be cool to witness it.

I say it will be cool because it is going to happen. And I don't mean it will happen eventually, I mean it will happen now. Tonight.

Cleveland used to be a city of perpetual hope and still is to some degree. It is a city of mill-workers and 9-5ers. And for the past 45 years, it has been a city of losers. But perpetual hope isn't cutting it anymore here in Cleveland. We have a team that is talented, committed and focused. And I know that they will win tonight, tomorrow and keep on winning every night until the NBA Championship trophy resides in the city by the Erie.

I am not saying this because of any skeptic belief or hope. I am saying it because I believe (probably foolishly so) that when talented, capable people all get together as a team and work hard to accomplish something, they will accomplish it.

And it will be ironic that in one of the poorest, and unluckiest cities in the country, during one of the poorest and unluckiest economies since the Great Depression that a team will prove that all it takes to succeed at something is to be good at it and to want it more than the next time.